It’s hard to believe that it’s been nearly 20 years since I started seeing Matia for Interstitial Cystitis.  Spoiler Alert: I don’t have IC anymore, and have barely thought about that label in decades. I hope my testimonial will give you hope and excitement for a life free from the awful pain and anxiety of IC.

Twenty+ years ago, I was a young woman with the whole world ahead of me. Until I started experiencing chronic ‘bladder infections’ that were completely life-altering, devastating and debilitating. It took several months and repeated antibiotics for my doctor to realize I didn’t have a bladder infection at all—and the IC diagnosis came soon after.  I could share all of the misery of IC, but I’m sure if you are reading this you already know how it feels.  Not only was I on prescriptions for bladder spasms and pain, but eventually for anxiety, depression, insomnia, and more.  My coworkers used to make fun of me because I walked around with a gallon zip lock bag of all my prescriptions.  I was only 23-years-old!

In a period of desperation, and endless (fruitless) searching online for ‘help’, I stumbled upon a website that two of Matia’s patients created for the sole purpose of giving other IC sufferers hope. I was in awe and near disbelief that these women were claiming they were free from IC.  But like I said—I was desperate.  I booked a flight to see her almost immediately; only knowing that I had to find another way to ‘manage’ this awful disease.
When I went to my appointment, I came armed with a timeline of my health…Noting all the multiple rounds of antibiotics I had taken for strep throat as a kid, and the non-bladder infections most recently.  I indicated my 13+ years on hormonal birth control, my sugar addiction, etc.  At the time, I really had no understanding of how these things truly affected my body, but I wanted to share everything about myself.

I’m going to make a really long story short…Matia immediately recognized the patterns that brought me to IC.  She told me that through diet and an herbal protocol I would heal.  And I believed her.  I started her protocol immediately and in about two to three weeks I was completely out of pain with zero prescriptions. It probably took a year or more to feel completely balanced, but Matia walked with me every step of the way. I really can’t say enough about her absolute-expert knowledge of IC, her kindness, compassion, and true caring.  She taught me so much about my body, and the importance of what I put into and on my body.  It wasn’t just about the food-but water, air, cosmetics, and so much more.  It’s not an exaggeration to say she changed my life in more ways than one.

After realizing that ‘if given half a chance the body will heal itself’, I had to learn more!  I eventually went on to become a holistic health coach.  When I had my two daughters they became instant patients of Matia’s—she is and has been our family’s main point of contact for our health since they were born!  On a sidenote: one of my daughter’s was born almost 12 weeks early and weighed two pounds at birth.  Due to a genetic propensity and intravenous antibiotics at birth she developed full body, bloody open wound eczema.  Determined to heal the root cause and not cover up symptoms my daughter made a full recovery without any pharmaceutical intervention with Matia’s skilled help.

My daughters are now 13 and 14, and the lessons and guidance from Matia are still implemented in our household and daily lives.  My daughters examine any product that will go on their body to be sure it doesn’t contain toxic ingredients.  They use herbal protocols when faced with a cough or other ill. They have an awareness of how different foods make them feel.  And as teenagers—with the occasional not-ideal food—they go in with eyes wide open and can assess how inflammatory foods make them feel.

I’m not sure where I would be or my family would be without the leap of faith to work with Matia all those years ago.  All I know is that one decision not only erased the IC label given to me (which really just meant ‘your bladder is inflamed and we don’t know why!) and enlightened me to our body’s miraculous ability to heal. To this day I still tell the story of that one time I was told by doctors I would have a chronic, debilitating disease for life—and how it went away in less than a month with a different approach focused on root cause healing.  I will forever be grateful to Matia and Bomamed!

I’m so excited to see Matia and Boaz begin this stage of their journey. The work they are doing is so incredibly important, and the fact that they want to share their knowledge with the world shows how truly dedicated they are to helping people. I was diagnosed with IC when I was 21, and similarly to Matia and many other’s stories, it completely destroyed my life. I went from doctor to doctor trying to figure out what was going on, and how I could be helped, but nothing worked. Several months in, I thankfully found Matia through one of her other patients, a young woman who was struggling with IC as well. Within months of working with Matia I began to see improvements. It was incredible– I couldn’t believe it. I’m 30 now, and pain free from IC! I have been working with Matia for nearly a decade, and as everyone else has said, she saved my life. She has endless compassion, understanding, and a true desire to help people find their healthiest selves. ~KH
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So happy to see Matia and Boaz continuing this work on IC Matia is one of a kind-I think she is truly brilliant and worked with me with a kind heart and incredible patience. I was a mess and in so much pain —but after working with her I once again was able to live life!! Thank u Matia! Love u and all u have done for me! ❤️❤️ Excited to see more on u tube! ~CE
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How exciting! Matia gave me my life back. I went from barely existing in a world of pain, to truly living a painless energetic life with beautiful healthy children. They are more than doctors who hand you a pill, but instead guide you to heal yourself in a way. Their knowledge of the human body as a whole is refreshing and real, and I count myself incredibly lucky for finding them. These new videos will help others to healthier happier lives, and for that I am once again grateful. Thank you Matia and Boaz! ~MB
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I am so thrilled for this YouTube channel!!!! It will be a wealth of information!! Matia Brizman literally changed my entire life!!!! I lived 25 years with pain, unable to stick with a job or school bc of my IC. Finally I found Matia who wanted to help find the root of my problem vs giving me a pill to mask my pain. I quickly began to feel better and it was then that my life truly began! I soon moved to Spain, Mexico, Germany and now back in Mexico enjoying this new pain free and wonderful life! I am truly forever grateful to her and wish I could give her endless hugs!!!! ~LMB
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Oh my gosh, I am so happy to see you both on YouTube! Viewers, If you have IC, or any imbalance for that matter, do yourself a lifesaving favor and subscribe to this channel. I have to echo the sentiments of many of the other commenters in saying Matia Brizman not only guided me into getting my life back, but truly influenced the entire trajectory of my life and that of my family’s. When I met her 10 years ago i was in the depths of despair, in chronic, debilitating pain. I was hopeless. Matia helped me identify the root cause of my pain and in just WEEKS I started feeling like a new person. I will forever be indebted, and feel so strongly about her philosophy on health and wellness. Please, subscribe, watch and implement what Matia and Boaz suggest and I am 100% confident that you will see your life change for the better too. Thank you Matia and Boaz for taking valuable time to share your experience and wisdom with us! I anxiously await your next video… ~MF
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I am one of Matia’s patients and below is a letter that I wrote her very recently. I was so debilitated by IC with terrible pain, urgency, and pressure that was relentless. Now, I don’t even think about my bladder at all. After watching their video, this is what I wrote Matia.

Matia,

I just watched your first video. It was so great to see you and Boaz again. You are beautiful. It brings a flood of emotion into my heart because what you have done for me is indescribable with words. You gave me my life back. You brought so much hope into my life when there was none. You allowed me to live the life I have always dreamed of. You’ve allowed me to be the wife and mother I always wanted to be. Watching this video brought back tough memories of when I was so debilitated. I feel like I take it for granted that my bladder feels so amazing now. I seriously LOVE you. I am so incredibly grateful for what you have done for me and so many other women. You are simply the best and I cannot imagine my life without having our paths cross. I know you truly care about me and I want you to know I truly care about you. I pray for you by name everyday and have for years. You are an angel to me and so many and I am sending you a great big virtual hug!!!!!! Thank you will never be enough, but I hope by giving you this heartfelt note that you know how much you mean to me. I hold you so high and I respect so much your work and dedication to your patients. You never gave up on me. You taught me that the impossible is possible. You showed me that I can believe in myself and my body’s ability to heal. Now I am a mother to 4 beautiful children. That would have NEVER been possible without you. I am attaching pics of my four precious blessings. May God continue to bless you and Boaz as you continue educating and inspiring hope in so many. ~KM
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So excited to see this next chapter of ICAMA come to life! Matia is an incredible healer and she changed my life. Back when I had constant burning bladder pain and had to pee every 5 minutes, traditional MDs would just look at me and say they’re sorry and there’s nothing they can do except give me more antibiotics that don’t work. They can’t even begin to understand how a disease like this starts or how to treat the many causes. Matia was one of the first people to successfully help her patients heal from IC by addressing the root causes and I learned so much by being in her treatment. Chinese medicine is truly incredible and so very few people understand it or how to use it, even for every day colds and flu. If more people have this information, they can avoid and heal from chronic disease, and that’s why I’m so happy to see this channel! ~LD
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So glad to see Drs. Matia and Boaz doing these videos!! The world NEEDS their amazing knowledge on how to manage IC. Dr. Matia saved me from debilitating IC. I was dying and she saved my life. And she has helped me to get healthier than I have EVER been. Both Dr. Matia and Dr. Boaz have helped so many like me and with these videos, I suspect they will help so many more. Can’t wait for the next video!!! RR
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The ICAMA way of combining western and Chinese medicine is wonderful. Ir makes so much sense to use knowledge accumulated over thousands of years in both cultures! That’s why they have helped so many patients to lead normal, healthy lives. The decision to share their approach and knowledge about interstitial cystitis on this new channel is both kind and brilliant. I’m so happy to know that now, with this new YouTube Channel, so many more people will find effective help. ~KS
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So nice to see this video! I truly admire the work that you both do and I’m still grateful every day for having found Matia 9 years ago. My health was getting worse every month and I was scared but hopeful when I started treatment. It was not an easy road but I got my health back and I’m still feeling very well. The most beautiful gift after a few years of treatment was finally being pregnant and having 2 wonderful children. Thanks so much for changing my life! ~VL
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It’s incredibly important for people to see this channel and get to know the fantastic work that Matia and Boaz are doing. They have changed the lives of many chronically ill people. The pain and fatigue that accompanies chronic illness is often ignored by the world of medicine as it cannot be “seen” and sadly at time cannot be treated. The way in which Matia and Boaz approach the patient as a whole with understanding and determination is truly remarkable. They work to heal the body step by step and never assume that you have to live with constant pain and discomfort for the rest of your life. I dread to think where many IC patients would be without their help and knowledge. I can’t wait to see more. ~SK
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Words will never adequately express my deep, sincere gratitude for the work of Dr. Matia Brizman. With her expertise and guidance, I enjoy a life of health and vitality. To say I have “beaten the odds” is a vast understatement. Doctors always look puzzled when they read my list of prior diagnoses and see how well I am doing! Many thanks to Drs. Matia and Boaz, and I look forward to seeing more videos! ~KH
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Matia Brizman gave me back my life 20 YEARS AGO!! I always think about how different things would have been without her, and I am grateful. It comforts me to know that she will always be there if I need her. She is such a kind and caring practitioner who works hard to to get you well again. Helping us is her mission in life, still, all these years later. She is a person I will never ever forget. ~ M2
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I am very happy to see this new venture Drs Brizman!
I cannot imagine would have become of me if I hadn’t found Dr Matia 9 years ago. The journey is not an easy one, but for me, the only one I know of for healing with IC! I will be tuned in :)..Lois
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You will hear this over and over a thousand times in these comments and each of us mean it from the bottom of our hearts – Matia saved our lives, she gave us our lives back! So very thrilled to finally see them sharing their enormous wealth of knowledge and wisdom with the world!! Made me a firm believer in the power of alternative medicine, specifically Chinese medicine in re-mediating chronic health conditions. It is a difficult journey but is completely worth it. In a world where most people will tell you that you may have to live with the issues for ever, don’t believe them. There is HOPE and it starts (and ends) at ICAMA and Bomamed (mic drop). ~HW
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Dr Matia Brizman changed my life! I have gained a whole new perspective on how everything I do (and don’t do) has an impact on my health and well being. Having been told by doctors that there was nothing they could do to help me, I immediately turned to Dr Brizman. Not only am I able to lead a normal life, but my overall health is vastly improved. I feel so fortunate to have found Matia, and am happy she and Boaz are able to share their expertise. Such wonderful, caring people! CE
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Beautiful video! So glad this is out to give others a chance to find help at Bomamed. Dr. Matia Brizman – what you went through was a hard and terrible time, but it happened to help others, one of which was ME! I also suffered with IC and am now well. Thank you for your life work and thanks to Dr. Boaz Brizman too for caring enough about others to learn about how to treat this disease as well. Looking forward to more videos… because learning never ends. ~MS
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Dr Matia Brizman changed my life! I have gained a whole new perspective on how everything I do (and don’t do) has an impact on my health and well being. Having been told by doctors that there was nothing they could do to help me, I immediately turned to Dr Brizman. Not only am I able to lead a normal life, but my overall health is vastly improved. I feel so fortunate to have found Matia, and am happy she and Boaz are able to share their expertise. Such wonderful, caring people! ~CE

If you are reading this, you are likely in a lot of pain, terrified about what the future might hold, and whether you will ever be able to have a normal life…at least that’s how I felt.
My name is Olivia, and everything started for me on the 13th of February 2021, one day before Valentine’s day. I was 24, living in the UK, practising a job that I liked, with great friends, an amazing boyfriend at the time and loving life. Until, everything changed for me one morning.
After the first morning pee, out of the blue, I started suffering from urinary urgency, frequency followed by pelvic pain and very weird urethral shock-like spasms. I had no burning. From my previous experiences with urinary tract infections, I was sure I had one and thus went to my GP who prescribed a first course of antibiotics. I started taking it but it made me worse, so he changed the antibiotic and I was still getting worse. Finally, he gave me a 3rd one and my symptoms settled down to 40% but I still had lingering manifestations of the infections.
After several rounds of urologist and gynaecologist telling me I was fine and many many tears of despair, I landed in a clinic specialised in Chronic embedded urinary tract infection (also referred to as Interstitial Cystitis) where they finally gave the diagnosis. At first, I felt relief because I thought my solution revolved around taking long term high dose antibiotics however it turned out that my body would not tolerate them for more than 1 month as side effects were horrible and started outweighing my never-ending bladder symptoms. They included chronic vaginal thrush, acid reflux, nausea, anal fissures, debilitating fatigue, constipation, and neuropathic manifestations mainly pins and needles on my arms and legs. I was truly horrible; I genuinely thought my life was over.
Desperate, I carried on extensive research and landed on BOMAMED’s website. Initially I was very sceptic because I am a healthcare professional trained to use western medicines and never considered eastern medicines to be effective. But when I turned to Boaz, I made the best decision of my life and never looked back. I dropped the antibiotics for good and left the urology clinic I was treating at because I knew they were not able to help me. I started on Boaz’s protocol with the diet at first then he added the herbs. As I am typing this it has been 3 months, and I am MUCH improved not just with the bladder but other areas of my body including vagina, gut, skin, hair, energy levels, and mood. I am not yet consistently symptom free but I know I will get there. His understanding of this disease and protocol in place is so unique and I truly believe there is no one out there who deals with this disease like they do. Best of all, this protocol gave me NO side effects. The diet is strict but eventually it will open up and I will start adding more food in. This is SUCH A SMALL price to pay next to the horror of IC. In addition, I communicated the knowledge of healthy lifestyle Boaz gave me to my family and friends and they started implementing it as well, seeing how positive the results are.
I am truly hoping you will give Boaz the chance to get you out of this misery, and direct you towards wellness and good health. I am forever grateful to their clinic for everything they do. Thank you will never be enough!!!

Lisa B
2 years ago
I am so thrilled for this YouTube channel!!!! It will be a wealth of information!! Matia Brizman literally changed my entire life!!!! I lived 25 years with pain, unable to stick with a job or school bc of my IC. Finally I found Matia who wanted to help find the root of my problem vs giving me a pill to mask my pain. I quickly began to feel better and it was then that my life truly began! I soon moved to Spain, Mexico, Germany and now back in Mexico enjoying this new pain free and wonderful life! I am truly forever grateful to her and wish I could give her endless hugs!!!!

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Hannah
2 years ago
You will hear this over and over a thousand times in these comments and each of us mean it from the bottom of our hearts – Matia saved our lives, she gave us our lives back! So very thrilled to finally see them sharing their enormous wealth of knowledge and wisdom with the world!! Made me a firm believer in the power of alternative medicine, specifically Chinese medicine in re-mediating chronic health conditions. It is a difficult journey but is completely worth it. In a world where most people will tell you that you may have to live with the issues for ever, don’t believe them. There is HOPE and it starts (and ends) at ICAMA and Bomamed (mic drop).

---

M.R. Rojas
2 years ago
So glad to see Drs. Matia and Boaz doing these videos!! The world NEEDS their amazing knowledge on how to manage IC. Dr. Matia saved me from debilitating IC. I was dying and she saved my life. And she has helped me to get healthier than I have EVER been. Both Dr. Matia and Dr. Boaz have helped so many like me and with these videos, I suspect they will help so many more. Can’t wait for the next video!!!

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Kelly M
1 year ago
I am one of Matia’s patients and below is a letter that I wrote her very recently. I was so debilitated by IC with terrible pain, urgency, and pressure that was relentless. Now, I don’t even think about my bladder at all. After watching their video, this is what I wrote Matia.

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Matia,

I just watched your first video. It was so great to see you and Boaz again. You are beautiful. It brings a flood of emotion into my heart because what you have done for me is indescribable with words. You gave me my life back. You brought so much hope into my life when there was none. You allowed me to live the life I have always dreamed of. You’ve allowed me to be the wife and mother I always wanted to be. Watching this video brought back tough memories of when I was so debilitated. I feel like I take it for granted that my bladder feels so amazing now. I seriously LOVE you. I am so incredibly grateful for what you have done for me and so many other women. You are simply the best and I cannot imagine my life without having our paths cross. I know you truly care about me and I want you to know I truly care about you. I pray for you by name everyday and have for years. You are an angel to me and so many and I am sending you a great big virtual hug!!!!!! Thank you will never be enough, but I hope by giving you this heartfelt note that you know how much you mean to me. I hold you so high and I respect so much your work and dedication to your patients. You never gave up on me. You taught me that the impossible is possible. You showed me that I can believe in myself and my body’s ability to heal. Now I am a mother to 4 beautiful children. That would have NEVER been possible without you. I am attaching pics of my four precious blessings. May God continue to bless you and Boaz as you continue educating and inspiring hope in so many.

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Katie Hays
2 years ago (edited)
Words will never adequately express my deep, sincere gratitude for the work of Dr. Matia Brizman. With her expertise and guidance, I enjoy a life of health and vitality. To say I have “beaten the odds” is a vast understatement. Doctors always look puzzled when they read my list of prior diagnoses and see how well I am doing! Many thanks to Drs. Matia and Boaz, and I look forward to seeing more videos!

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Me2u9916
2 years ago
Matia Brizman gave me back my life 20 YEARS AGO!! I always think about how different things would have been without her, and I am grateful. It comforts me to know that she will always be there if I need her. She is such a kind and caring practitioner who works hard to to get you well again. Helping us is her mission in life, still, all these years later. She is a person I will never ever forget.

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From IC to My Best Life

In the years just prior to my diagnosis, I lived a decidedly amazing life. The existence I had going wasn’t just kind of good but it was one that truly looked blessed at the time and had been, on many occasions, actually called “amazing” by the people that know me well. Much of this perception came from the thought of how much my life had changed since my childhood. In my 30s, before IC entered the picture I loved the day to day. I was fit and happy. I rarely got sick and didn’t even know who my primary care doctor was. I married my person in this world and we lived in a charming neighborhood near the downtown area of Denver, only a few minutes from a company I had built and was made CEO of at a precocious age of 34. We had children and both were born healthy. The truth; well, the truth I know now, is that my existence was not that great. Much of the way I had to lived growing up and some of the commonplace practices of my adult life had created growing imbalances around me and within my body. Back then I didn’t know I was on a journey and didn’t know I was traveling down a dark path. One that is so clear to me now but that I was oblivious to at the time.

From time to time I read a book called Awareness, by Anthony deMellow. The stories keep me centered. The premise is that most of us don’t change until we hit rock bottom. We seek relief, we mask our issues, and talk about our trials ad nauseam. It isn’t until we run out of these things that we look at where we’ve sank only to find there is only one hard path left to walk. I grew up in rural Alaska. My mother was terminally ill and severely disabled. My siblings and I cared for her while we raised each other. My father worked away from home. It was a kids raising kids environment. It was a place of duress and uncertainty. At 17 I was able to acquire a job doing manual labor on the trans-Alaskan pipeline on the northern ice flats of the US and eventually got myself into college in Colorado and my siblings moved there as well. The five of us climbed up from rock bottom. My sister worked for a meat-packing plant to pay for her college and is also a CEO of a successful company. We climbed up and up and out. It was from these circumstances that I built the “amazing” life I lived before I was diagnosed with IC. And, the place from where I would fall to a rock bottom beyond imagining.

After my second child was born, my body mostly made its way back into shape and good health. I was 38, ran a large company and was raising two kids. There were plenty of excuses that both the doctors and I could come up with for why I continued to feel fatigued and experienced difficulty in maintaining my usual positive mood with each sunrise. It was during this time that I started to have what I thought was repeated urinary tract infections, something I had little encounter with before. It seemed that I would contract one for almost any reason: sex, swimming or not showering the moment I got home from the gym. Looking back, I now can see that only one of the many trips to the doctor during these six months actually resulted in a conclusive infection. The other episodes only produced symptoms similar to UTI.

A few months later, the two kids and I traveled to visit family about 3 hours out of town and during the night, I woke with again, what I thought was a terrible UTI. I went to the rural Colorado emergency room in the area and they gave me an antibiotic. I felt anxious, really tired and struggled with the constant feeling like I needed to use the bathroom. And when I did, it burned. I was traveling with a baby and a toddler. It was an unforgettable miserable experience. As the days went on, I remember thinking that something seemed really wrong. I took yet another prescribed antibiotic and was able to recover some. But within a week of completing the antibiotics and without doing any of the things that normally agitated my system, the symptoms resurfaced. I was instructed to drink plenty of water, to stay away from coffee and to use the over-the-counter medicine AZO to numb the bladder and help me get more consecutive hours of sleep. I had been getting up 3-6 times each night to go to the bathroom or to drink water to stay extra hydrated. The messages from the doctors were confusing, the fatigue all-encompassing and my steadfast mood of good cheer much harder to find.

Over the next few months, I lived in almost constant discomfort and pain. It felt like my kidneys were going to explode, which made my back flanks tender, even to the touch. I developed a rash on my stomach and chest. My hands, feet and face were puffy and I had terrible headaches that hurt round the clock. My vision was blurry often and sometimes I couldn’t read street signs or drive after dark. I have always been a thin small framed person, but during this time, my stomach was permanently distended, constantly making noise, full of pinch pains and nausea. I started to wear my maternity clothes again, to keep the pressure of my stomach and bladder area. No matter how simple and clean the food I would select to eat was, everything I ate bothered my digestion. Sometimes food made me so nauseated that I would skip meals while taking magnesium to help flush my system back to some level of comfort and recognizable size. The whites of my eyes had yellowed and became red with veins. My hair fell out in shocking amounts, when I washed it. My eyelashes thinned to almost nothing. My fingernails had unending ridges and splits. After a life of commitment to rigorous exercise, I gave up any extra activity all together. My muscles were weak and my joints hurt. I couldn’t even escape it at night, as I woke constantly feeling freezing cold and wrought with nightmares. When I did get up in the mornings, I thought about whether or not I would get to come home for a short nap that day and how early I could maybe lay down to rest that night. I was exhausted starting with the moment I got out of bed. One of my wrists and one of my knees hurt so badly that I had trouble lifting my beautiful one year old baby to hold him.

It had been about 10 months since the issues started. By then, my mood was so down that I had to pray and focus before I walked out of my room in the morning to greet my kids and breathe before I walked into meetings for work. I had ceased going into the office unless it was absolutely necessary, saving all my energy to showcase myself it was absolutely necessary. I had a terrible time concentrating and had to plan the times that I would make key decisions for my family or the company. I would plan a nap and drink coffee, then focus exclusively on the subject at hand. I was a shadow of the keen ball of energy that ran one of the largest companies in our industry and a thriving home. I had a permanent puffy sheet-white face. The rash had now moved to cover my entire torso, front and back, as well as, one arm, my neck and to my devastation – it had made its way to my chin and jaw. My immune system was down and I started to get every sickness that kids brought home from daycare. I had goopy congested eyes that I could not seem to fight off, a terrible chest cold that had left me sleeping sitting up for over a month and back pain sever enough to make me unable to sit in a chair at times. My eyes and nose felt irritated and clogged with mucus. If I were to go swimming or to have sex, it would take almost 4 weeks for the irritation in my bladder to subside, during which time I would hardly be able to sleep. I needed to go to the bathroom constantly and my urine burned at each of these frequent visits.

I had been in to see my primary care doctor, an urologist, an internist, a nutritionist and into the emergency room five times in less than eight weeks. None knew what was wrong with me and most of the appointments left me more confused and less sure of what to try next. One specialists would tell me I need to drink more water, while another would tell me I had been drinking too much water. Some wanted me to get more activity and others told me I needed to let my body completely rest. Most wanted to put me on daily low dose antibiotics, as a precaution should any of my mounting symptoms build towards an actual infection. This was the most confusing, since during all of these months only one of the dozens of UTI scares had concluded in an actual infection. One appointment ended with the doctor asking if I had considered seeking psychiatric help to assist with what he had witnessed as a dramatic change in character.

One day, I was at a luncheon for work downtown and I found myself in so much pain that I thought I was going to pass out and fall off my chair. I managed to get my car from the valet and drive myself to the ER where one young female doctor there recognized that I had interstitial cystitis and formally diagnosed me. She immediately spoke to what I had experienced. She recommended I meet with my urologist again with this diagnosis in hand. This next appointment turned out to be what crushed me to my lowest low and the deepest rock bottom I had ever found myself. The urologist agreed with my diagnoses and went on to give me a devastating prognosis. She told me that I needed to immediately begin heavy doses of some of the strongest antibiotics available. These would be rotated to create a fake immune system and would be a permanent part of my life. She let me know that there was no real cure for IC. I learned that some of the drugs on the market provide relief temporarily but become ineffective over time. There were suggestions for pelvic floor treatments, drugs that numb the flank pain and bladder, and depression medicines. None of the options presented would actually heal the condition and all only addressed a handful of the issues I was dealing with. I learned that without a real immune system, my life expectancy was much shorter. And, during that shortened period, I would live with various levels of discomfort and symptoms. The news broke me in a way that I had never felt before. It was, after all, my greatest fear; that I might get sick and leave my children without a mother, just as mine had done to me.

I made it to my car before I burst into tears. I called my husband. We weren’t surprised by the seriousness; I had been very sick for almost a year by then. But it was the lack of any path ahead that brought us all the way down. I could climb up from rock bottom. I had proven that to myself before but there didn’t seem to be any path to take. Despite the miserable state I was in, I didn’t want to mask the pain or find temporary relief. I wanted to heal. And for this, there seemed to be no way ahead.

That night, after everyone was tucked in bed, I went to the kitchen, kneeled down on the floor, put my face in my hands and cried the deepest cry I had ever let out of me. My innermost sadness felt almost bottomless in that moment. IC had literally brought me to my knees and I was praying for hope. The old me was trapped inside a crumbling body and I wanted out with all of my heart. On that night I decided that I would learn everything there was about IC and that I would try to live as long as I possibly could, for my family. I would live well and full and happy for my kids or die trying.

My husband and I immediately hired an attorney and got our affairs in order. We made plans for the worst while keeping the smallest light for a way up and out. We quickly decided that I would not be taking the antibiotics prescribed. I had an instinct that the antibiotics I took months earlier had been a tipping point for sending me headlong into my condition. I was looking for a different path, a confident path. None of the doctors I had met gave me the impression that they had real surety in my diagnosis, prognosis or treatment plan. I needed a guru, someone to lift me by truly knowing what was going on inside me.

The next day I dove into research and read countless stories from IC patients across the country. It was then that I found – in two separated searches on the same day – two people who lived on two different coasts that were sharing eye-catching stories. What was most unusual was that both believed they were healed. One wrote that she “didn’t even think about IC anymore”, something I could hardly imagine at the time. The first person I found had worked with someone they repeatedly referred to simply as Matia; no last name or formality and it was obvious that they knew each other very well. In the second story, the writer regarded her guiding person as Boaz. There recounts were shocking and I was frozen taking it all in. I searched Matia and Boaz and IC and remember how what I saw on the screen put me back in my chair. They both worked at a placed called BomaMed; these two strangers had been heeled by the same source.

I was in terrible pain, couldn’t breathe well and was emotionally depleted when the person on the other end of the line answered the phone at BomaMed. She reassured me that I had found the right place, that I would be okay. I was stunned by their readiness and got so much comfort from the fact that I could tell the team was seasoned in receiving people in my deteriorated state.

The online form required to begin was extensive. I had to dig into health history and provide deep information on my body’s journey from birth to present. My first appointment with Boaz continued this research phase. He asked a lot of questions about my past and present situation. The anticipation for the first appointment was enormous. I was in so much pain and was crawling through each day using AZO to numb my urinary tract, nose drops so I could breathe at all, drops to clear out my eyes and a variety of creams in an attempt to control the rashes. I needed help and with everything that I was, I wanted this to be the answer for me. And, I didn’t even know what “this” was!

The first few appointments were an adjustment for me, particularly given how much time I had recently spent in traditional western medicine doctor offices. Boaz asked a surprising amount of questions, something that never occurred in the year of appointments that led up to this. He listened carefully to my answers and was quiet as he took down extensive notes. He spoke confidently and was un-phased by any of my symptoms. I got this very uplifting feeling of reassurance because he responded to my scenario as being common for someone with IC. I went from a year staring at the faces of expensive specialist wearing puzzled expressions into appointments where comment after comment explained exactly what I was living with day after day. With little prompting, Boaz often outlined exactly what I had been through up until that point. And, he always explained why the symptoms were occurring. And, I will never forget that early on, I told him what the doctors had shared as my prognosis. His simple response was, “But that is not the truth.” It was the way that he said it that made me know, even though we had hardly started working together, that I was at the right place. That I was going to be okay. That I had a good chance of getting well if I could learn what he had come to know.

I was excited and I could see the hope reflected in my husband’s face when I told him about my first upcoming appointment. That said, I left the initial appointment and discussion with Boaz with one simple instruction: to go get quality spring water and stop drinking anything else. And, to increase my water intake. I sat unmoved, frustrated that there would be several more days before I would talk to him again and all that I had to make me feel better would be some store bought water. My previous experience with doctors had trained me to think I should be leaving my appointment with something I would take that would start to work for me to make me feel better – an easy-button with at least some quick results. The idea that there would be effort on my part was foreign. So, I asked Boaz how long it would take for me to get well. I learned that it is different for everyone but that it took a long period of time to create my current condition and so it could take a while to make me well again. It was then that I realized I needed to accept the pace of true healing.

After the first appointment, I drank only Spring Water and I tried to consume a full liter more than I had been each day. By day four, my urine only burned sometimes and while I still had a headache, each day these became less severe. During my second appointment, I learned about the IC diet that had been carefully honed through decades of research by Boaz and his wife Matia. I was pleased to see that it was as clean as my family already liked to eat but was curious about why some foods I had always consumed were deemed off limits and others that I had thought would agitate me were staples. The list was more restrictive than anything I had ever tried but also revealing of new possibilities. I was determined and set up our home to fully embrace the change. And, I began to take some recommended herbs that were carefully designed to help slowly drain my lymphatic system of toxins and long-held pathogens, as well as, address my immune system condition and my gut imbalance. The appointments with Boaz brought me confidence and determination each week. It took a while for me to accept that what the western medicine doctors had thought were a slew of unrelated issues, were actually deeply connected and very common for IC patients in Boaz’s program.

The appointments with Boaz always started with a simple question about how I was feeling and then a series of questions that marked milestones and concluded with time for me to ask him questions that I had compiled during the days in-between our meetings. He has a wonderful way of teaching that is a blend of listening carefully and sometimes answering with a question that I need to answer for myself. Often times, Boaz teaches with a metaphoric story that creates, in my mind’s eye, an image of what is going on inside me. For example, it was a very exciting day when I was well enough to drink quality coffee but I was reminded that caffeine can be like fuel poured over a campfire – that the fire doesn’t last longer, it just concentrates it in shorter period of time. And, from time to time, Boaz would tell absolutely humorous stories of journeys he had been a part of over the years, all of which continued to help me feel empowered and less alone as I climbed up and up.

Early on, I supplemented my learning with researching about IC. I quickly found that most of the world was far behind the program created at BomaMed. I read Matia’s research book and worked to build my own knowledge of what my body was going through and how it was being healed. When you work with Boaz, you quickly recognize an enormous learning curve in front of you. Boaz and his family live in the future and with an awareness that most of us don’t know is available. My path to getting to live and live well took me into learning about how my body works and into deep reflection of my own life, all of the way back to birth.

Boaz often discussed aspects of my childhood with respect to how the gut and lymphatic system can be damaged over time. As an infant, I was colicky, making it more difficult for the mother/baby bond to be established. Later, the home and place for developing and safeguarding gut balance early on, was stressful and unsettling. These things played a role in laying the ground work for my immune system to be less effective. I recalled having migraines on the school bus on the way home from kindergarten. Most of my life I have been thwarting head pain, food reactions and stomach discomfort – all of which worsened when I had my children and as I aged. Boaz connected occurrences and milestones from my past to damage done to my body.

My first eight to 10 weeks on the diet and taking the herbs brought drenching night sweats, terrible body odor and bone crushing-fatigue. Sometimes I could hardly force myself to stand up. I had thought that I had lived a clean diet before working with Boaz but I had really just developed a hodge-podgy uninformed way of eating whole healthy foods that ultimately had made my condition worse. Things like coconut oil, gluten free breads, poorly raised eggs and some kinds of fruit had been severely irritating my gut. There were times that my body incessantly craved some of the old irritating foods that I used to eat. I then asked Boaz the question I am certain he must get from nearly all of his patients: when will I be able to eat all of those old foods again? When can I eat whatever I want? He simple responded with, “why would you go back to what created the condition you have now?” This comment stayed with me for weeks and eventually I came to fully break up with my old way of living, in favor of finding my way back to the amazing-ness of the life I had before. In the initial months, all of the detox and focus on a better way of living was in an effort to get back to where I was before.

With the new plan, I started to have full days without headaches and some days my face was much less puffy. The rash on my neck and chin diminished. I was beginning to sleep for longer stretches at a time at night and some of the congestion in my respiratory system had cleared out. My eyes cleared. I started to not have to go to the bathroom for several hours at a time and the burning had subsided.

Boaz also worked with me to rid other toxins from entering my system. I remember giving him two pages of products that I used for showers, make-up and hair routines. After trying some products from the natural store, that at first seemed non-toxic enough, I eventually filled our cabinets with toiletries designed by BomaMed’s BomaSense line. The first time I washed myself with the soap they crafted, I realized how important our skin is as a barrier. Boaz had told me many times but that day I experienced it. I washed and felt nothing. Nothing. Which I now hold in high regard. And, was so much better than something in those days. I used to always feel dry, itchy and burning. My skin was quiet with the BomaSense soap. I started to use their shampoo and conditioner and my hair became less brittle and so full and thick that I had to purchase a more robust brand of hair tie. My eyelashes were thicker too. I learned everything I could about what I put on my body. I became aware of what I allowed to get close to my skin. My nails, now without polish, grew out straight and a lovely healthy pink color.

My mood and cognitive capability was still not great every day but it took less to mind over matter each morning. Every time I ate anything, I still wanted to fall asleep at the table. On one airline flight I took, I had to breathe and pray for the entire duration. It was going through a flare and it felt like I was going all the way back to the beginning. The pain in my joints, need to urinate and anxiousness was overwhelming. But Boaz guided me through it. And, as he had let me know, these occasional flares were not setbacks. The enormous progress made was all still there and the length of the flares got shorter and the frequency of these episodes far less. What took a month to recover from only took one day to heal a year later. I went through several cycles of feeling a little better and then again further detoxing. Once in a while, I found myself completely peaceful, something I hadn’t felt in many years. I was healing but continued to focus on becoming completely well. And, I was beginning to see that anything was possible. With Boaz’s guidance, my body had overcome and become healthier than dozens of medical professionals had thought possible just months earlier. By the end of the fourth month, I had more good-feeling days than days filled with discomfort. The worst symptoms were well under control by the end of year one, but I wanted more.

As I embarked on year two, the focus was to diminish remaining symptoms more completely and to establish enduring health. Today, my home has a permanent point-of-use high-grade water filter for use by the whole family and for use during all of our cooking. Adhering to the diet no longer feels like a sacrifice; I can now see it was a necessary retraining on how to eat beautifully. My body and mind are glowing. My skin is as flawless as it was when I was a teenager. I can exercise now – harder and more intensely than before – and my muscles are properly fueled so the performance is beyond anything I have ever seen for myself. My nails, always natural now, are strong and even. My eyes are a brilliant blue with the clearest whites surrounding. My hair is shiny, long and full. Most importantly, I have immense cognitive clarity and a peaceful even mood. I had suffered from nightmares since I was 7 years old. Today, my disposition is even and open each morning when I wake and my nights are filled with uninterrupted sleep that lasts as long as 7 hours.

The second year brought astounding good health. Health that I didn’t know existed for me, a way of living that exceeded the previous “amazing” life I had thought I was working to get back to. And, with this came many surprises. I had been a part of a champion rowing team on a green algae-covered lake. For years, my teammates had complained of the odor of the lake. I never had any real sense of smell. I now smell the rank lake before I get out of my car to walk to the dock, as well as, the sweetness of my kids on my clothes after a good hug and the aroma of turkey-basil meatballs slow roasting. The glowing days of mental clarity and inner peace showcase a feeling and way to move through life that I want to possess day in and out. As I traveled the path and climbed up and up even more, my mindset moved from not wanting bad things to happen in my body, to wanting the best working systems possible.

The gift of a good clear mind and a quiet body is life changing. I now live with low anxiety and rarely find something worth stress – both things I previous thought to be from unmanageable origins like genetic inheritance, the conditions of my childhood or the years of pressure in my early career. It turns out that having a truly healthy body that is toxin free, balanced, fueled properly and well hydrated can give you copious amounts of good cheer. And, when this springs forth from such a sincere place, you become an experience for all around you. Living well, truly well, showed me how much the health of my body can impact the lives of my family and my staff at work. Becoming healthy and balanced has made the environments around me more balanced and calm.

I too can now say that I don’t think about IC anymore. I have been given the gift of knowledge for how to live my best life. Developing IC took me to the deepest rock bottom and caused me to face my biggest fear in life. It broke me down physically and mentally. Boaz taught me how to rebuild, to heal and to live well. On one of my recent appointments, Boaz said, “I’m not worried about achieving your objectives so much as achieving your potential.” What he knew was possible for me was beyond what I thought achievable for myself. It still brings me to tears when I think of that day on the kitchen floor or when I attempt to thank Boaz for my transformation; for the path shown and for teaching me how to climb up and up. And, for all the AMAZING unexpected joy.

Katie 2018

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A link to many more stories like these:

Lisa B
2 years ago
I am so thrilled for this YouTube channel!!!! It will be a wealth of information!! Matia Brizman literally changed my entire life!!!! I lived 25 years with pain, unable to stick with a job or school bc of my IC. Finally I found Matia who wanted to help find the root of my problem vs giving me a pill to mask my pain. I quickly began to feel better and it was then that my life truly began! I soon moved to Spain, Mexico, Germany and now back in Mexico enjoying this new pain free and wonderful life! I am truly forever grateful to her and wish I could give her endless hugs!!!!

Hannah
2 years ago
You will hear this over and over a thousand times in these comments and each of us mean it from the bottom of our hearts – Matia saved our lives, she gave us our lives back! So very thrilled to finally see them sharing their enormous wealth of knowledge and wisdom with the world!! Made me a firm believer in the power of alternative medicine, specifically Chinese medicine in re-mediating chronic health conditions. It is a difficult journey but is completely worth it. In a world where most people will tell you that you may have to live with the issues for ever, don’t believe them. There is HOPE and it starts (and ends) at ICAMA and Bomamed (mic drop).

M.R. Rojas
2 years ago
So glad to see Drs. Matia and Boaz doing these videos!! The world NEEDS their amazing knowledge on how to manage IC. Dr. Matia saved me from debilitating IC. I was dying and she saved my life. And she has helped me to get healthier than I have EVER been. Both Dr. Matia and Dr. Boaz have helped so many like me and with these videos, I suspect they will help so many more. Can’t wait for the next video!!!

Kelly M
1 year ago
I am one of Matia’s patients and below is a letter that I wrote her very recently. I was so debilitated by IC with terrible pain, urgency, and pressure that was relentless. Now, I don’t even think about my bladder at all. After watching their video, this is what I wrote Matia.

Matia,

I just watched your first video. It was so great to see you and Boaz again. You are beautiful. It brings a flood of emotion into my heart because what you have done for me is indescribable with words. You gave me my life back. You brought so much hope into my life when there was none. You allowed me to live the life I have always dreamed of. You’ve allowed me to be the wife and mother I always wanted to be. Watching this video brought back tough memories of when I was so debilitated. I feel like I take it for granted that my bladder feels so amazing now. I seriously LOVE you. I am so incredibly grateful for what you have done for me and so many other women. You are simply the best and I cannot imagine my life without having our paths cross. I know you truly care about me and I want you to know I truly care about you. I pray for you by name everyday and have for years. You are an angel to me and so many and I am sending you a great big virtual hug!!!!!! Thank you will never be enough, but I hope by giving you this heartfelt note that you know how much you mean to me. I hold you so high and I respect so much your work and dedication to your patients. You never gave up on me. You taught me that the impossible is possible. You showed me that I can believe in myself and my body’s ability to heal. Now I am a mother to 4 beautiful children. That would have NEVER been possible without you. I am attaching pics of my four precious blessings. May God continue to bless you and Boaz as you continue educating and inspiring hope in so many.

Katie Hays
2 years ago (edited)
Words will never adequately express my deep, sincere gratitude for the work of Dr. Matia Brizman. With her expertise and guidance, I enjoy a life of health and vitality. To say I have “beaten the odds” is a vast understatement. Doctors always look puzzled when they read my list of prior diagnoses and see how well I am doing! Many thanks to Drs. Matia and Boaz, and I look forward to seeing more videos!

Me2u9916
2 years ago
Matia Brizman gave me back my life 20 YEARS AGO!! I always think about how different things would have been without her, and I am grateful. It comforts me to know that she will always be there if I need her. She is such a kind and caring practitioner who works hard to to get you well again. Helping us is her mission in life, still, all these years later. She is a person I will never ever forget.

From IC to My Best Life

In the years just prior to my diagnosis, I lived a decidedly amazing life. The existence I had going wasn’t just kind of good but it was one that truly looked blessed at the time and had been, on many occasions, actually called “amazing” by the people that know me well. Much of this perception came from the thought of how much my life had changed since my childhood. In my 30s, before IC entered the picture I loved the day to day. I was fit and happy. I rarely got sick and didn’t even know who my primary care doctor was. I married my person in this world and we lived in a charming neighborhood near the downtown area of Denver, only a few minutes from a company I had built and was made CEO of at a precocious age of 34. We had children and both were born healthy. The truth; well, the truth I know now, is that my existence was not that great. Much of the way I had to lived growing up and some of the commonplace practices of my adult life had created growing imbalances around me and within my body. Back then I didn’t know I was on a journey and didn’t know I was traveling down a dark path. One that is so clear to me now but that I was oblivious to at the time.

From time to time I read a book called Awareness, by Anthony deMellow. The stories keep me centered. The premise is that most of us don’t change until we hit rock bottom. We seek relief, we mask our issues, and talk about our trials ad nauseam. It isn’t until we run out of these things that we look at where we’ve sank only to find there is only one hard path left to walk. I grew up in rural Alaska. My mother was terminally ill and severely disabled. My siblings and I cared for her while we raised each other. My father worked away from home. It was a kids raising kids environment. It was a place of duress and uncertainty. At 17 I was able to acquire a job doing manual labor on the trans-Alaskan pipeline on the northern ice flats of the US and eventually got myself into college in Colorado and my siblings moved there as well. The five of us climbed up from rock bottom. My sister worked for a meat-packing plant to pay for her college and is also a CEO of a successful company. We climbed up and up and out. It was from these circumstances that I built the “amazing” life I lived before I was diagnosed with IC. And, the place from where I would fall to a rock bottom beyond imagining.

After my second child was born, my body mostly made its way back into shape and good health. I was 38, ran a large company and was raising two kids. There were plenty of excuses that both the doctors and I could come up with for why I continued to feel fatigued and experienced difficulty in maintaining my usual positive mood with each sunrise. It was during this time that I started to have what I thought was repeated urinary tract infections, something I had little encounter with before. It seemed that I would contract one for almost any reason: sex, swimming or not showering the moment I got home from the gym. Looking back, I now can see that only one of the many trips to the doctor during these six months actually resulted in a conclusive infection. The other episodes only produced symptoms similar to UTI.

A few months later, the two kids and I traveled to visit family about 3 hours out of town and during the night, I woke with again, what I thought was a terrible UTI. I went to the rural Colorado emergency room in the area and they gave me an antibiotic. I felt anxious, really tired and struggled with the constant feeling like I needed to use the bathroom. And when I did, it burned. I was traveling with a baby and a toddler. It was an unforgettable miserable experience. As the days went on, I remember thinking that something seemed really wrong. I took yet another prescribed antibiotic and was able to recover some. But within a week of completing the antibiotics and without doing any of the things that normally agitated my system, the symptoms resurfaced. I was instructed to drink plenty of water, to stay away from coffee and to use the over-the-counter medicine AZO to numb the bladder and help me get more consecutive hours of sleep. I had been getting up 3-6 times each night to go to the bathroom or to drink water to stay extra hydrated. The messages from the doctors were confusing, the fatigue all-encompassing and my steadfast mood of good cheer much harder to find.

Over the next few months, I lived in almost constant discomfort and pain. It felt like my kidneys were going to explode, which made my back flanks tender, even to the touch. I developed a rash on my stomach and chest. My hands, feet and face were puffy and I had terrible headaches that hurt round the clock. My vision was blurry often and sometimes I couldn’t read street signs or drive after dark. I have always been a thin small framed person, but during this time, my stomach was permanently distended, constantly making noise, full of pinch pains and nausea. I started to wear my maternity clothes again, to keep the pressure of my stomach and bladder area. No matter how simple and clean the food I would select to eat was, everything I ate bothered my digestion. Sometimes food made me so nauseated that I would skip meals while taking magnesium to help flush my system back to some level of comfort and recognizable size. The whites of my eyes had yellowed and became red with veins. My hair fell out in shocking amounts, when I washed it. My eyelashes thinned to almost nothing. My fingernails had unending ridges and splits. After a life of commitment to rigorous exercise, I gave up any extra activity all together. My muscles were weak and my joints hurt. I couldn’t even escape it at night, as I woke constantly feeling freezing cold and wrought with nightmares. When I did get up in the mornings, I thought about whether or not I would get to come home for a short nap that day and how early I could maybe lay down to rest that night. I was exhausted starting with the moment I got out of bed. One of my wrists and one of my knees hurt so badly that I had trouble lifting my beautiful one year old baby to hold him.

It had been about 10 months since the issues started. By then, my mood was so down that I had to pray and focus before I walked out of my room in the morning to greet my kids and breathe before I walked into meetings for work. I had ceased going into the office unless it was absolutely necessary, saving all my energy to showcase myself it was absolutely necessary. I had a terrible time concentrating and had to plan the times that I would make key decisions for my family or the company. I would plan a nap and drink coffee, then focus exclusively on the subject at hand. I was a shadow of the keen ball of energy that ran one of the largest companies in our industry and a thriving home. I had a permanent puffy sheet-white face. The rash had now moved to cover my entire torso, front and back, as well as, one arm, my neck and to my devastation – it had made its way to my chin and jaw. My immune system was down and I started to get every sickness that kids brought home from daycare. I had goopy congested eyes that I could not seem to fight off, a terrible chest cold that had left me sleeping sitting up for over a month and back pain sever enough to make me unable to sit in a chair at times. My eyes and nose felt irritated and clogged with mucus. If I were to go swimming or to have sex, it would take almost 4 weeks for the irritation in my bladder to subside, during which time I would hardly be able to sleep. I needed to go to the bathroom constantly and my urine burned at each of these frequent visits.

I had been in to see my primary care doctor, an urologist, an internist, a nutritionist and into the emergency room five times in less than eight weeks. None knew what was wrong with me and most of the appointments left me more confused and less sure of what to try next. One specialists would tell me I need to drink more water, while another would tell me I had been drinking too much water. Some wanted me to get more activity and others told me I needed to let my body completely rest. Most wanted to put me on daily low dose antibiotics, as a precaution should any of my mounting symptoms build towards an actual infection. This was the most confusing, since during all of these months only one of the dozens of UTI scares had concluded in an actual infection. One appointment ended with the doctor asking if I had considered seeking psychiatric help to assist with what he had witnessed as a dramatic change in character.

One day, I was at a luncheon for work downtown and I found myself in so much pain that I thought I was going to pass out and fall off my chair. I managed to get my car from the valet and drive myself to the ER where one young female doctor there recognized that I had interstitial cystitis and formally diagnosed me. She immediately spoke to what I had experienced. She recommended I meet with my urologist again with this diagnosis in hand. This next appointment turned out to be what crushed me to my lowest low and the deepest rock bottom I had ever found myself. The urologist agreed with my diagnoses and went on to give me a devastating prognosis. She told me that I needed to immediately begin heavy doses of some of the strongest antibiotics available. These would be rotated to create a fake immune system and would be a permanent part of my life. She let me know that there was no real cure for IC. I learned that some of the drugs on the market provide relief temporarily but become ineffective over time. There were suggestions for pelvic floor treatments, drugs that numb the flank pain and bladder, and depression medicines. None of the options presented would actually heal the condition and all only addressed a handful of the issues I was dealing with. I learned that without a real immune system, my life expectancy was much shorter. And, during that shortened period, I would live with various levels of discomfort and symptoms. The news broke me in a way that I had never felt before. It was, after all, my greatest fear; that I might get sick and leave my children without a mother, just as mine had done to me.

I made it to my car before I burst into tears. I called my husband. We weren’t surprised by the seriousness; I had been very sick for almost a year by then. But it was the lack of any path ahead that brought us all the way down. I could climb up from rock bottom. I had proven that to myself before but there didn’t seem to be any path to take. Despite the miserable state I was in, I didn’t want to mask the pain or find temporary relief. I wanted to heal. And for this, there seemed to be no way ahead.

That night, after everyone was tucked in bed, I went to the kitchen, kneeled down on the floor, put my face in my hands and cried the deepest cry I had ever let out of me. My innermost sadness felt almost bottomless in that moment. IC had literally brought me to my knees and I was praying for hope. The old me was trapped inside a crumbling body and I wanted out with all of my heart. On that night I decided that I would learn everything there was about IC and that I would try to live as long as I possibly could, for my family. I would live well and full and happy for my kids or die trying.

My husband and I immediately hired an attorney and got our affairs in order. We made plans for the worst while keeping the smallest light for a way up and out. We quickly decided that I would not be taking the antibiotics prescribed. I had an instinct that the antibiotics I took months earlier had been a tipping point for sending me headlong into my condition. I was looking for a different path, a confident path. None of the doctors I had met gave me the impression that they had real surety in my diagnosis, prognosis or treatment plan. I needed a guru, someone to lift me by truly knowing what was going on inside me.

The next day I dove into research and read countless stories from IC patients across the country. It was then that I found – in two separated searches on the same day – two people who lived on two different coasts that were sharing eye-catching stories. What was most unusual was that both believed they were healed. One wrote that she “didn’t even think about IC anymore”, something I could hardly imagine at the time. The first person I found had worked with someone they repeatedly referred to simply as Matia; no last name or formality and it was obvious that they knew each other very well. In the second story, the writer regarded her guiding person as Boaz. There recounts were shocking and I was frozen taking it all in. I searched Matia and Boaz and IC and remember how what I saw on the screen put me back in my chair. They both worked at a placed called BomaMed; these two strangers had been heeled by the same source.

I was in terrible pain, couldn’t breathe well and was emotionally depleted when the person on the other end of the line answered the phone at BomaMed. She reassured me that I had found the right place, that I would be okay. I was stunned by their readiness and got so much comfort from the fact that I could tell the team was seasoned in receiving people in my deteriorated state.

The online form required to begin was extensive. I had to dig into health history and provide deep information on my body’s journey from birth to present. My first appointment with Boaz continued this research phase. He asked a lot of questions about my past and present situation. The anticipation for the first appointment was enormous. I was in so much pain and was crawling through each day using AZO to numb my urinary tract, nose drops so I could breathe at all, drops to clear out my eyes and a variety of creams in an attempt to control the rashes. I needed help and with everything that I was, I wanted this to be the answer for me. And, I didn’t even know what “this” was!

The first few appointments were an adjustment for me, particularly given how much time I had recently spent in traditional western medicine doctor offices. Boaz asked a surprising amount of questions, something that never occurred in the year of appointments that led up to this. He listened carefully to my answers and was quiet as he took down extensive notes. He spoke confidently and was un-phased by any of my symptoms. I got this very uplifting feeling of reassurance because he responded to my scenario as being common for someone with IC. I went from a year staring at the faces of expensive specialist wearing puzzled expressions into appointments where comment after comment explained exactly what I was living with day after day. With little prompting, Boaz often outlined exactly what I had been through up until that point. And, he always explained why the symptoms were occurring. And, I will never forget that early on, I told him what the doctors had shared as my prognosis. His simple response was, “But that is not the truth.” It was the way that he said it that made me know, even though we had hardly started working together, that I was at the right place. That I was going to be okay. That I had a good chance of getting well if I could learn what he had come to know.

I was excited and I could see the hope reflected in my husband’s face when I told him about my first upcoming appointment. That said, I left the initial appointment and discussion with Boaz with one simple instruction: to go get quality spring water and stop drinking anything else. And, to increase my water intake. I sat unmoved, frustrated that there would be several more days before I would talk to him again and all that I had to make me feel better would be some store bought water. My previous experience with doctors had trained me to think I should be leaving my appointment with something I would take that would start to work for me to make me feel better – an easy-button with at least some quick results. The idea that there would be effort on my part was foreign. So, I asked Boaz how long it would take for me to get well. I learned that it is different for everyone but that it took a long period of time to create my current condition and so it could take a while to make me well again. It was then that I realized I needed to accept the pace of true healing.

After the first appointment, I drank only Spring Water and I tried to consume a full liter more than I had been each day. By day four, my urine only burned sometimes and while I still had a headache, each day these became less severe. During my second appointment, I learned about the IC diet that had been carefully honed through decades of research by Boaz and his wife Matia. I was pleased to see that it was as clean as my family already liked to eat but was curious about why some foods I had always consumed were deemed off limits and others that I had thought would agitate me were staples. The list was more restrictive than anything I had ever tried but also revealing of new possibilities. I was determined and set up our home to fully embrace the change. And, I began to take some recommended herbs that were carefully designed to help slowly drain my lymphatic system of toxins and long-held pathogens, as well as, address my immune system condition and my gut imbalance. The appointments with Boaz brought me confidence and determination each week. It took a while for me to accept that what the western medicine doctors had thought were a slew of unrelated issues, were actually deeply connected and very common for IC patients in Boaz’s program.

The appointments with Boaz always started with a simple question about how I was feeling and then a series of questions that marked milestones and concluded with time for me to ask him questions that I had compiled during the days in-between our meetings. He has a wonderful way of teaching that is a blend of listening carefully and sometimes answering with a question that I need to answer for myself. Often times, Boaz teaches with a metaphoric story that creates, in my mind’s eye, an image of what is going on inside me. For example, it was a very exciting day when I was well enough to drink quality coffee but I was reminded that caffeine can be like fuel poured over a campfire – that the fire doesn’t last longer, it just concentrates it in shorter period of time. And, from time to time, Boaz would tell absolutely humorous stories of journeys he had been a part of over the years, all of which continued to help me feel empowered and less alone as I climbed up and up.

Early on, I supplemented my learning with researching about IC. I quickly found that most of the world was far behind the program created at BomaMed. I read Matia’s research book and worked to build my own knowledge of what my body was going through and how it was being healed. When you work with Boaz, you quickly recognize an enormous learning curve in front of you. Boaz and his family live in the future and with an awareness that most of us don’t know is available. My path to getting to live and live well took me into learning about how my body works and into deep reflection of my own life, all of the way back to birth.

Boaz often discussed aspects of my childhood with respect to how the gut and lymphatic system can be damaged over time. As an infant, I was colicky, making it more difficult for the mother/baby bond to be established. Later, the home and place for developing and safeguarding gut balance early on, was stressful and unsettling. These things played a role in laying the ground work for my immune system to be less effective. I recalled having migraines on the school bus on the way home from kindergarten. Most of my life I have been thwarting head pain, food reactions and stomach discomfort – all of which worsened when I had my children and as I aged. Boaz connected occurrences and milestones from my past to damage done to my body.

My first eight to 10 weeks on the diet and taking the herbs brought drenching night sweats, terrible body odor and bone crushing-fatigue. Sometimes I could hardly force myself to stand up. I had thought that I had lived a clean diet before working with Boaz but I had really just developed a hodge-podgy uninformed way of eating whole healthy foods that ultimately had made my condition worse. Things like coconut oil, gluten free breads, poorly raised eggs and some kinds of fruit had been severely irritating my gut. There were times that my body incessantly craved some of the old irritating foods that I used to eat. I then asked Boaz the question I am certain he must get from nearly all of his patients: when will I be able to eat all of those old foods again? When can I eat whatever I want? He simple responded with, “why would you go back to what created the condition you have now?” This comment stayed with me for weeks and eventually I came to fully break up with my old way of living, in favor of finding my way back to the amazing-ness of the life I had before. In the initial months, all of the detox and focus on a better way of living was in an effort to get back to where I was before.

With the new plan, I started to have full days without headaches and some days my face was much less puffy. The rash on my neck and chin diminished. I was beginning to sleep for longer stretches at a time at night and some of the congestion in my respiratory system had cleared out. My eyes cleared. I started to not have to go to the bathroom for several hours at a time and the burning had subsided.

Boaz also worked with me to rid other toxins from entering my system. I remember giving him two pages of products that I used for showers, make-up and hair routines. After trying some products from the natural store, that at first seemed non-toxic enough, I eventually filled our cabinets with toiletries designed by BomaMed’s BomaSense line. The first time I washed myself with the soap they crafted, I realized how important our skin is as a barrier. Boaz had told me many times but that day I experienced it. I washed and felt nothing. Nothing. Which I now hold in high regard. And, was so much better than something in those days. I used to always feel dry, itchy and burning. My skin was quiet with the BomaSense soap. I started to use their shampoo and conditioner and my hair became less brittle and so full and thick that I had to purchase a more robust brand of hair tie. My eyelashes were thicker too. I learned everything I could about what I put on my body. I became aware of what I allowed to get close to my skin. My nails, now without polish, grew out straight and a lovely healthy pink color.

My mood and cognitive capability was still not great every day but it took less to mind over matter each morning. Every time I ate anything, I still wanted to fall asleep at the table. On one airline flight I took, I had to breathe and pray for the entire duration. It was going through a flare and it felt like I was going all the way back to the beginning. The pain in my joints, need to urinate and anxiousness was overwhelming. But Boaz guided me through it. And, as he had let me know, these occasional flares were not setbacks. The enormous progress made was all still there and the length of the flares got shorter and the frequency of these episodes far less. What took a month to recover from only took one day to heal a year later. I went through several cycles of feeling a little better and then again further detoxing. Once in a while, I found myself completely peaceful, something I hadn’t felt in many years. I was healing but continued to focus on becoming completely well. And, I was beginning to see that anything was possible. With Boaz’s guidance, my body had overcome and become healthier than dozens of medical professionals had thought possible just months earlier. By the end of the fourth month, I had more good-feeling days than days filled with discomfort. The worst symptoms were well under control by the end of year one, but I wanted more.

As I embarked on year two, the focus was to diminish remaining symptoms more completely and to establish enduring health. Today, my home has a permanent point-of-use high-grade water filter for use by the whole family and for use during all of our cooking. Adhering to the diet no longer feels like a sacrifice; I can now see it was a necessary retraining on how to eat beautifully. My body and mind are glowing. My skin is as flawless as it was when I was a teenager. I can exercise now – harder and more intensely than before – and my muscles are properly fueled so the performance is beyond anything I have ever seen for myself. My nails, always natural now, are strong and even. My eyes are a brilliant blue with the clearest whites surrounding. My hair is shiny, long and full. Most importantly, I have immense cognitive clarity and a peaceful even mood. I had suffered from nightmares since I was 7 years old. Today, my disposition is even and open each morning when I wake and my nights are filled with uninterrupted sleep that lasts as long as 7 hours.

The second year brought astounding good health. Health that I didn’t know existed for me, a way of living that exceeded the previous “amazing” life I had thought I was working to get back to. And, with this came many surprises. I had been a part of a champion rowing team on a green algae-covered lake. For years, my teammates had complained of the odor of the lake. I never had any real sense of smell. I now smell the rank lake before I get out of my car to walk to the dock, as well as, the sweetness of my kids on my clothes after a good hug and the aroma of turkey-basil meatballs slow roasting. The glowing days of mental clarity and inner peace showcase a feeling and way to move through life that I want to possess day in and out. As I traveled the path and climbed up and up even more, my mindset moved from not wanting bad things to happen in my body, to wanting the best working systems possible.

The gift of a good clear mind and a quiet body is life changing. I now live with low anxiety and rarely find something worth stress – both things I previous thought to be from unmanageable origins like genetic inheritance, the conditions of my childhood or the years of pressure in my early career. It turns out that having a truly healthy body that is toxin free, balanced, fueled properly and well hydrated can give you copious amounts of good cheer. And, when this springs forth from such a sincere place, you become an experience for all around you. Living well, truly well, showed me how much the health of my body can impact the lives of my family and my staff at work. Becoming healthy and balanced has made the environments around me more balanced and calm.

I too can now say that I don’t think about IC anymore. I have been given the gift of knowledge for how to live my best life. Developing IC took me to the deepest rock bottom and caused me to face my biggest fear in life. It broke me down physically and mentally. Boaz taught me how to rebuild, to heal and to live well. On one of my recent appointments, Boaz said, “I’m not worried about achieving your objectives so much as achieving your potential.” What he knew was possible for me was beyond what I thought achievable for myself. It still brings me to tears when I think of that day on the kitchen floor or when I attempt to thank Boaz for my transformation; for the path shown and for teaching me how to climb up and up. And, for all the AMAZING unexpected joy.

Katie 2018

A link to many more stories like these:

I didn’t see it coming, I was totally unaware of how what I ate could lead to disease. I had a high sugar diet all my life. There were some early signs; acne in my teens, for which I started taking the pill, and a diagnosis of PCOS. Once I came off the pill in my late 20s and started to take a multivitamin to help get my body in the best shape in preparation for a pregnancy, things started to go wrong. Within the space of about six months things started to unravel. Bloating, abdominal pain, a colonoscopy, an allergic reaction to an antibiotic for a misdiagnosed bowel infection, a miscarriage and a laparoscopy to find out what was going on. I woke up from that laparoscopy feeling really unwell. Vaginal burning, itching, a constant full bladder feeling, urgency, frequency. Within a few weeks, this was in 2010, I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis.
Urologists told me I would have this chronic disease for life.
I was prescribed medication for IC that had the potential to damage my liver, so decided not to take it. I searched and searched for a practitioner who could help me get better naturally. I flew to London, and worked with a herbalist for a year. I made a bit of progress.

Then I found out about Dr. Matia Brizman.
My husband and me flew to LA, and after that initial visit I started monthly phone consults. Slowly my health improved. I learned how my intestinal health was really poor and how that made my body sick. Slowly we rebuilt. Feeling a bit better every month, with the occasional set back. It took 3 years for me to get well and be completely symptom free. I had a baby daughter and two and a half years later another baby daughter. Literally dreams coming true. I am forever grateful for finding Dr. Brizman and how her natural treatment and guidance got me better.

This is just a note to those seeking stories. For the last many years, we have been posting these stories in the blog and not on this page. We will regroup them here, but mean time, please browse through our blog and look for stories. There are many many there!

From IC to My Best Life

In the years just prior to my diagnosis, I lived a decidedly amazing life. The existence I had going wasn’t just kind of good but it was one that truly looked blessed at the time and had been, on many occasions, actually called “amazing” by the people that know me well. Much of this perception came from the thought of how much my life had changed since my childhood. In my 30s, before IC entered the picture I loved the day to day. I was fit and happy. I rarely got sick and didn’t even know who my primary care doctor was. I married my person in this world and we lived in a charming neighborhood near the downtown area of Denver, only a few minutes from a company I had built and was made CEO of at a precocious age of 34. We had children and both were born healthy. The truth; well, the truth I know now, is that my existence was not that great. Much of the way I had to lived growing up and some of the commonplace practices of my adult life had created growing imbalances around me and within my body. Back then I didn’t know I was on a journey and didn’t know I was traveling down a dark path. One that is so clear to me now but that I was oblivious to at the time.

From time to time I read a book called Awareness, by Anthony deMellow. The stories keep me centered. The premise is that most of us don’t change until we hit rock bottom. We seek relief, we mask our issues, and talk about our trials ad nauseam. It isn’t until we run out of these things that we look at where we’ve sank only to find there is only one hard path left to walk. I grew up in rural Alaska. My mother was terminally ill and severely disabled. My siblings and I cared for her while we raised each other. My father worked away from home. It was a kids raising kids environment. It was a place of duress and uncertainty. At 17 I was able to acquire a job doing manual labor on the trans-Alaskan pipeline on the northern ice flats of the US and eventually got myself into college in Colorado and my siblings moved there as well. The five of us climbed up from rock bottom. My sister worked for a meat-packing plant to pay for her college and is also a CEO of a successful company. We climbed up and up and out. It was from these circumstances that I built the “amazing” life I lived before I was diagnosed with IC. And, the place from where I would fall to a rock bottom beyond imagining.

After my second child was born, my body mostly made its way back into shape and good health. I was 38, ran a large company and was raising two kids. There were plenty of excuses that both the doctors and I could come up with for why I continued to feel fatigued and experienced difficulty in maintaining my usual positive mood with each sunrise. It was during this time that I started to have what I thought was repeated urinary tract infections, something I had little encounter with before. It seemed that I would contract one for almost any reason: sex, swimming or not showering the moment I got home from the gym. Looking back, I now can see that only one of the many trips to the doctor during these six months actually resulted in a conclusive infection. The other episodes only produced symptoms similar to UTI.

A few months later, the two kids and I traveled to visit family about 3 hours out of town and during the night, I woke with again, what I thought was a terrible UTI. I went to the rural Colorado emergency room in the area and they gave me an antibiotic. I felt anxious, really tired and struggled with the constant feeling like I needed to use the bathroom. And when I did, it burned. I was traveling with a baby and a toddler. It was an unforgettable miserable experience. As the days went on, I remember thinking that something seemed really wrong. I took yet another prescribed antibiotic and was able to recover some. But within a week of completing the antibiotics and without doing any of the things that normally agitated my system, the symptoms resurfaced. I was instructed to drink plenty of water, to stay away from coffee and to use the over-the-counter medicine AZO to numb the bladder and help me get more consecutive hours of sleep. I had been getting up 3-6 times each night to go to the bathroom or to drink water to stay extra hydrated. The messages from the doctors were confusing, the fatigue all-encompassing and my steadfast mood of good cheer much harder to find.

Over the next few months, I lived in almost constant discomfort and pain. It felt like my kidneys were going to explode, which made my back flanks tender, even to the touch. I developed a rash on my stomach and chest. My hands, feet and face were puffy and I had terrible headaches that hurt round the clock. My vision was blurry often and sometimes I couldn’t read street signs or drive after dark. I have always been a thin small framed person, but during this time, my stomach was permanently distended, constantly making noise, full of pinch pains and nausea. I started to wear my maternity clothes again, to keep the pressure of my stomach and bladder area. No matter how simple and clean the food I would select to eat was, everything I ate bothered my digestion. Sometimes food made me so nauseated that I would skip meals while taking magnesium to help flush my system back to some level of comfort and recognizable size. The whites of my eyes had yellowed and became red with veins. My hair fell out in shocking amounts, when I washed it. My eyelashes thinned to almost nothing. My fingernails had unending ridges and splits. After a life of commitment to rigorous exercise, I gave up any extra activity all together. My muscles were weak and my joints hurt. I couldn’t even escape it at night, as I woke constantly feeling freezing cold and wrought with nightmares. When I did get up in the mornings, I thought about whether or not I would get to come home for a short nap that day and how early I could maybe lay down to rest that night. I was exhausted starting with the moment I got out of bed. One of my wrists and one of my knees hurt so badly that I had trouble lifting my beautiful one year old baby to hold him.

It had been about 10 months since the issues started. By then, my mood was so down that I had to pray and focus before I walked out of my room in the morning to greet my kids and breathe before I walked into meetings for work. I had ceased going into the office unless it was absolutely necessary, saving all my energy to showcase myself it was absolutely necessary. I had a terrible time concentrating and had to plan the times that I would make key decisions for my family or the company. I would plan a nap and drink coffee, then focus exclusively on the subject at hand. I was a shadow of the keen ball of energy that ran one of the largest companies in our industry and a thriving home. I had a permanent puffy sheet-white face. The rash had now moved to cover my entire torso, front and back, as well as, one arm, my neck and to my devastation – it had made its way to my chin and jaw. My immune system was down and I started to get every sickness that kids brought home from daycare. I had goopy congested eyes that I could not seem to fight off, a terrible chest cold that had left me sleeping sitting up for over a month and back pain sever enough to make me unable to sit in a chair at times. My eyes and nose felt irritated and clogged with mucus. If I were to go swimming or to have sex, it would take almost 4 weeks for the irritation in my bladder to subside, during which time I would hardly be able to sleep. I needed to go to the bathroom constantly and my urine burned at each of these frequent visits.

I had been in to see my primary care doctor, an urologist, an internist, a nutritionist and into the emergency room five times in less than eight weeks. None knew what was wrong with me and most of the appointments left me more confused and less sure of what to try next. One specialists would tell me I need to drink more water, while another would tell me I had been drinking too much water. Some wanted me to get more activity and others told me I needed to let my body completely rest. Most wanted to put me on daily low dose antibiotics, as a precaution should any of my mounting symptoms build towards an actual infection. This was the most confusing, since during all of these months only one of the dozens of UTI scares had concluded in an actual infection. One appointment ended with the doctor asking if I had considered seeking psychiatric help to assist with what he had witnessed as a dramatic change in character.

One day, I was at a luncheon for work downtown and I found myself in so much pain that I thought I was going to pass out and fall off my chair. I managed to get my car from the valet and drive myself to the ER where one young female doctor there recognized that I had interstitial cystitis and formally diagnosed me. She immediately spoke to what I had experienced. She recommended I meet with my urologist again with this diagnosis in hand. This next appointment turned out to be what crushed me to my lowest low and the deepest rock bottom I had ever found myself. The urologist agreed with my diagnoses and went on to give me a devastating prognosis. She told me that I needed to immediately begin heavy doses of some of the strongest antibiotics available. These would be rotated to create a fake immune system and would be a permanent part of my life. She let me know that there was no real cure for IC. I learned that some of the drugs on the market provide relief temporarily but become ineffective over time. There were suggestions for pelvic floor treatments, drugs that numb the flank pain and bladder, and depression medicines. None of the options presented would actually heal the condition and all only addressed a handful of the issues I was dealing with. I learned that without a real immune system, my life expectancy was much shorter. And, during that shortened period, I would live with various levels of discomfort and symptoms. The news broke me in a way that I had never felt before. It was, after all, my greatest fear; that I might get sick and leave my children without a mother, just as mine had done to me.

I made it to my car before I burst into tears. I called my husband. We weren’t surprised by the seriousness; I had been very sick for almost a year by then. But it was the lack of any path ahead that brought us all the way down. I could climb up from rock bottom. I had proven that to myself before but there didn’t seem to be any path to take. Despite the miserable state I was in, I didn’t want to mask the pain or find temporary relief. I wanted to heal. And for this, there seemed to be no way ahead.

That night, after everyone was tucked in bed, I went to the kitchen, kneeled down on the floor, put my face in my hands and cried the deepest cry I had ever let out of me. My innermost sadness felt almost bottomless in that moment. IC had literally brought me to my knees and I was praying for hope. The old me was trapped inside a crumbling body and I wanted out with all of my heart. On that night I decided that I would learn everything there was about IC and that I would try to live as long as I possibly could, for my family. I would live well and full and happy for my kids or die trying.

My husband and I immediately hired an attorney and got our affairs in order. We made plans for the worst while keeping the smallest light for a way up and out. We quickly decided that I would not be taking the antibiotics prescribed. I had an instinct that the antibiotics I took months earlier had been a tipping point for sending me headlong into my condition. I was looking for a different path, a confident path. None of the doctors I had met gave me the impression that they had real surety in my diagnosis, prognosis or treatment plan. I needed a guru, someone to lift me by truly knowing what was going on inside me.

The next day I dove into research and read countless stories from IC patients across the country. It was then that I found – in two separated searches on the same day – two people who lived on two different coasts that were sharing eye-catching stories. What was most unusual was that both believed they were healed. One wrote that she “didn’t even think about IC anymore”, something I could hardly imagine at the time. The first person I found had worked with someone they repeatedly referred to simply as Matia; no last name or formality and it was obvious that they knew each other very well. In the second story, the writer regarded her guiding person as Boaz. There recounts were shocking and I was frozen taking it all in. I searched Matia and Boaz and IC and remember how what I saw on the screen put me back in my chair. They both worked at a placed called BomaMed; these two strangers had been heeled by the same source.

I was in terrible pain, couldn’t breathe well and was emotionally depleted when the person on the other end of the line answered the phone at BomaMed. She reassured me that I had found the right place, that I would be okay. I was stunned by their readiness and got so much comfort from the fact that I could tell the team was seasoned in receiving people in my deteriorated state.

The online form required to begin was extensive. I had to dig into health history and provide deep information on my body’s journey from birth to present. My first appointment with Boaz continued this research phase. He asked a lot of questions about my past and present situation. The anticipation for the first appointment was enormous. I was in so much pain and was crawling through each day using AZO to numb my urinary tract, nose drops so I could breathe at all, drops to clear out my eyes and a variety of creams in an attempt to control the rashes. I needed help and with everything that I was, I wanted this to be the answer for me. And, I didn’t even know what “this” was!

The first few appointments were an adjustment for me, particularly given how much time I had recently spent in traditional western medicine doctor offices. Boaz asked a surprising amount of questions, something that never occurred in the year of appointments that led up to this. He listened carefully to my answers and was quiet as he took down extensive notes. He spoke confidently and was un-phased by any of my symptoms. I got this very uplifting feeling of reassurance because he responded to my scenario as being common for someone with IC. I went from a year staring at the faces of expensive specialist wearing puzzled expressions into appointments where comment after comment explained exactly what I was living with day after day. With little prompting, Boaz often outlined exactly what I had been through up until that point. And, he always explained why the symptoms were occurring. And, I will never forget that early on, I told him what the doctors had shared as my prognosis. His simple response was, “But that is not the truth.” It was the way that he said it that made me know, even though we had hardly started working together, that I was at the right place. That I was going to be okay. That I had a good chance of getting well if I could learn what he had come to know.

I was excited and I could see the hope reflected in my husband’s face when I told him about my first upcoming appointment. That said, I left the initial appointment and discussion with Boaz with one simple instruction: to go get quality spring water and stop drinking anything else. And, to increase my water intake. I sat unmoved, frustrated that there would be several more days before I would talk to him again and all that I had to make me feel better would be some store bought water. My previous experience with doctors had trained me to think I should be leaving my appointment with something I would take that would start to work for me to make me feel better – an easy-button with at least some quick results. The idea that there would be effort on my part was foreign. So, I asked Boaz how long it would take for me to get well. I learned that it is different for everyone but that it took a long period of time to create my current condition and so it could take a while to make me well again. It was then that I realized I needed to accept the pace of true healing.

After the first appointment, I drank only Spring Water and I tried to consume a full liter more than I had been each day. By day four, my urine only burned sometimes and while I still had a headache, each day these became less severe. During my second appointment, I learned about the IC diet that had been carefully honed through decades of research by Boaz and his wife Matia. I was pleased to see that it was as clean as my family already liked to eat but was curious about why some foods I had always consumed were deemed off limits and others that I had thought would agitate me were staples. The list was more restrictive than anything I had ever tried but also revealing of new possibilities. I was determined and set up our home to fully embrace the change. And, I began to take some recommended herbs that were carefully designed to help slowly drain my lymphatic system of toxins and long-held pathogens, as well as, address my immune system condition and my gut imbalance. The appointments with Boaz brought me confidence and determination each week. It took a while for me to accept that what the western medicine doctors had thought were a slew of unrelated issues, were actually deeply connected and very common for IC patients in Boaz’s program.

The appointments with Boaz always started with a simple question about how I was feeling and then a series of questions that marked milestones and concluded with time for me to ask him questions that I had compiled during the days in-between our meetings. He has a wonderful way of teaching that is a blend of listening carefully and sometimes answering with a question that I need to answer for myself. Often times, Boaz teaches with a metaphoric story that creates, in my mind’s eye, an image of what is going on inside me. For example, it was a very exciting day when I was well enough to drink quality coffee but I was reminded that caffeine can be like fuel poured over a campfire – that the fire doesn’t last longer, it just concentrates it in shorter period of time. And, from time to time, Boaz would tell absolutely humorous stories of journeys he had been a part of over the years, all of which continued to help me feel empowered and less alone as I climbed up and up.

Early on, I supplemented my learning with researching about IC. I quickly found that most of the world was far behind the program created at BomaMed. I read Matia’s research book and worked to build my own knowledge of what my body was going through and how it was being healed. When you work with Boaz, you quickly recognize an enormous learning curve in front of you. Boaz and his family live in the future and with an awareness that most of us don’t know is available. My path to getting to live and live well took me into learning about how my body works and into deep reflection of my own life, all of the way back to birth.

Boaz often discussed aspects of my childhood with respect to how the gut and lymphatic system can be damaged over time. As an infant, I was colicky, making it more difficult for the mother/baby bond to be established. Later, the home and place for developing and safeguarding gut balance early on, was stressful and unsettling. These things played a role in laying the ground work for my immune system to be less effective. I recalled having migraines on the school bus on the way home from kindergarten. Most of my life I have been thwarting head pain, food reactions and stomach discomfort – all of which worsened when I had my children and as I aged. Boaz connected occurrences and milestones from my past to damage done to my body.

My first eight to 10 weeks on the diet and taking the herbs brought drenching night sweats, terrible body odor and bone crushing-fatigue. Sometimes I could hardly force myself to stand up. I had thought that I had lived a clean diet before working with Boaz but I had really just developed a hodge-podgy uninformed way of eating whole healthy foods that ultimately had made my condition worse. Things like coconut oil, gluten free breads, poorly raised eggs and some kinds of fruit had been severely irritating my gut. There were times that my body incessantly craved some of the old irritating foods that I used to eat. I then asked Boaz the question I am certain he must get from nearly all of his patients: when will I be able to eat all of those old foods again? When can I eat whatever I want? He simple responded with, “why would you go back to what created the condition you have now?” This comment stayed with me for weeks and eventually I came to fully break up with my old way of living, in favor of finding my way back to the amazing-ness of the life I had before. In the initial months, all of the detox and focus on a better way of living was in an effort to get back to where I was before.

With the new plan, I started to have full days without headaches and some days my face was much less puffy. The rash on my neck and chin diminished. I was beginning to sleep for longer stretches at a time at night and some of the congestion in my respiratory system had cleared out. My eyes cleared. I started to not have to go to the bathroom for several hours at a time and the burning had subsided.

Boaz also worked with me to rid other toxins from entering my system. I remember giving him two pages of products that I used for showers, make-up and hair routines. After trying some products from the natural store, that at first seemed non-toxic enough, I eventually filled our cabinets with toiletries designed by BomaMed’s BomaSense line. The first time I washed myself with the soap they crafted, I realized how important our skin is as a barrier. Boaz had told me many times but that day I experienced it. I washed and felt nothing. Nothing. Which I now hold in high regard. And, was so much better than something in those days. I used to always feel dry, itchy and burning. My skin was quiet with the BomaSense soap. I started to use their shampoo and conditioner and my hair became less brittle and so full and thick that I had to purchase a more robust brand of hair tie. My eyelashes were thicker too. I learned everything I could about what I put on my body. I became aware of what I allowed to get close to my skin. My nails, now without polish, grew out straight and a lovely healthy pink color.

My mood and cognitive capability was still not great every day but it took less to mind over matter each morning. Every time I ate anything, I still wanted to fall asleep at the table. On one airline flight I took, I had to breathe and pray for the entire duration. It was going through a flare and it felt like I was going all the way back to the beginning. The pain in my joints, need to urinate and anxiousness was overwhelming. But Boaz guided me through it. And, as he had let me know, these occasional flares were not setbacks. The enormous progress made was all still there and the length of the flares got shorter and the frequency of these episodes far less. What took a month to recover from only took one day to heal a year later. I went through several cycles of feeling a little better and then again further detoxing. Once in a while, I found myself completely peaceful, something I hadn’t felt in many years. I was healing but continued to focus on becoming completely well. And, I was beginning to see that anything was possible. With Boaz’s guidance, my body had overcome and become healthier than dozens of medical professionals had thought possible just months earlier. By the end of the fourth month, I had more good-feeling days than days filled with discomfort. The worst symptoms were well under control by the end of year one, but I wanted more.

As I embarked on year two, the focus was to diminish remaining symptoms more completely and to establish enduring health. Today, my home has a permanent point-of-use high-grade water filter for use by the whole family and for use during all of our cooking. Adhering to the diet no longer feels like a sacrifice; I can now see it was a necessary retraining on how to eat beautifully. My body and mind are glowing. My skin is as flawless as it was when I was a teenager. I can exercise now – harder and more intensely than before – and my muscles are properly fueled so the performance is beyond anything I have ever seen for myself. My nails, always natural now, are strong and even. My eyes are a brilliant blue with the clearest whites surrounding. My hair is shiny, long and full. Most importantly, I have immense cognitive clarity and a peaceful even mood. I had suffered from nightmares since I was 7 years old. Today, my disposition is even and open each morning when I wake and my nights are filled with uninterrupted sleep that lasts as long as 7 hours.

The second year brought astounding good health. Health that I didn’t know existed for me, a way of living that exceeded the previous “amazing” life I had thought I was working to get back to. And, with this came many surprises. I had been a part of a champion rowing team on a green algae-covered lake. For years, my teammates had complained of the odor of the lake. I never had any real sense of smell. I now smell the rank lake before I get out of my car to walk to the dock, as well as, the sweetness of my kids on my clothes after a good hug and the aroma of turkey-basil meatballs slow roasting. The glowing days of mental clarity and inner peace showcase a feeling and way to move through life that I want to possess day in and out. As I traveled the path and climbed up and up even more, my mindset moved from not wanting bad things to happen in my body, to wanting the best working systems possible.

The gift of a good clear mind and a quiet body is life changing. I now live with low anxiety and rarely find something worth stress – both things I previous thought to be from unmanageable origins like genetic inheritance, the conditions of my childhood or the years of pressure in my early career. It turns out that having a truly healthy body that is toxin free, balanced, fueled properly and well hydrated can give you copious amounts of good cheer. And, when this springs forth from such a sincere place, you become an experience for all around you. Living well, truly well, showed me how much the health of my body can impact the lives of my family and my staff at work. Becoming healthy and balanced has made the environments around me more balanced and calm.

I too can now say that I don’t think about IC anymore. I have been given the gift of knowledge for how to live my best life. Developing IC took me to the deepest rock bottom and caused me to face my biggest fear in life. It broke me down physically and mentally. Boaz taught me how to rebuild, to heal and to live well. On one of my recent appointments, Boaz said, “I’m not worried about achieving your objectives so much as achieving your potential.” What he knew was possible for me was beyond what I thought achievable for myself. It still brings me to tears when I think of that day on the kitchen floor or when I attempt to thank Boaz for my transformation; for the path shown and for teaching me how to climb up and up. And, for all the AMAZING unexpected joy.

Alexandra Maxine, born 04/06/08
I am 37 and this is my first child. I had a normal vaginal delivery exactly at 40 weeks and Sasha was born 5 hours after the water broke. She was 8 lbs 3 oz and given an Apgar score of 9. I am exclusively breastfeeding and she shows absolutely no signs of allergy to anything I eat and has a great appetite. I had no high blood pressure, no swelling and no gestational diabetes during pregnancy, gained 28 Lbs and healed incredibly fast.  3 years ago when I just started with Matia and was violently sick with IC, Matia promised me that I will get pregnant easily when I am ready and will have a healthy baby. I had a hard time believing her then. If it wasn’t for Matia this baby would never be born!

Samuel weighed 5 pounds and 2 ounces.  He was 6 weeks premature and had to be delivered via c-section.  My amniotic sac had ruptured.  Who knows why.  I was catherized and had all kinds of antibiotics.  My bladder did great and has done great since his birth.

Sage Alexandra Clark  12/28/05
 
It is hard to believe she was ever this tiny.  I was also one who Matia promised would be able to have a baby when my body was healthy and ready.  It is now hard to imagine how painful the IC was and at one point not having any hope that it would ever get better.  I, We (my family) are all so thankful to Matia for her knowledge and dedication to her work.  Matia’s passion and belief in alternative healing allowed me to believe it could be possible.  I can not even express how appreciative I am of Matia and this program.   I am now able to enjoy a healthy, happy life with my husband and two daughters.  Thanks again!  Shelley Clark

I had a great pregnancy–no problems whatsoever.  I didn’t have any morning sickness, high blood pressure, swelling, or anything.  I attribute that to Matia getting my whole body healthy in the years prior.  I gained about 22 pounds while I was pregnant.  My water broke 2 days before my due date, I had about 10 hours of labor, and I had a normal vaginal delivery.  I did have a hard time pusing my son out because he was 8 pounds/7 oz., but they did an episiotomy and he then made his way out.  My bladder held up just fine during my pregnancy, birth, and after the birth.  But again, I believe that is because Matia not only helped make my bladder well but my whole body also.
Thank you Matia for helping me have a healthy, happy little boy!
Michelle

Baby Michael
Born October 31, 2006, vaginal delivery
Absolutely no IC symptoms before or after his birth.

Luke Brenner Strickland born June 18 2006.  I had a normal vaginal delivery with NO affect to my bladder.  I healed easily and had no complications.

I never thought I would be able to have a normal pregnancy once I was diagnosed with IC.  I started seeing Matia and she assured me I would be healthy again.  On February 16, 2007, I gave birth to a perfect 9 lb baby boy.  My pregnancy was amazing.  I am healthier now than ever before.  I owe my recovery to Matia, without her help this would have never been possible.